The Wicked and the Witless coaaod-5

by Hugh Cook

  …

  'The honour of Rovac is legendary,' said Farfalla drily. Yet in recent years the inflation of Selzirk has been finding its own place in legend. The debasement of our coinage has worsened this inflation. Some nine years ago, the Regency in its wisdom decided to denominate all state salaries in hard coinage.' Wizard coinage,' said Jarl.

  'The coinage of trade,' said Farfalla smoothly. "Rest assured, however, that you need not take such into your hand. Triners, ilavales and sanarands do but measure official salaries, which are in fact paid in our local coinage at the prevailing rate of exchange.'

  Jarl, already regretting his outburst, protested no further. The ancient enmity between wizards and Rovac was a matter unfit for public discussion. He apologised for his outburst with surprising graciousness, and, after a handful of spurious speeches from a variety of officials, Farfalla was able to bring the audience to an end. Plovey then insisted on taking Sarazin to meet certain key members of the Regency.

  Farfalla, exhausted by the ordeal of the audience, sat back in her throne. Shortly, her translator came to her, looked around for eavesdroppers, then said: 'My lady.' Tes?' said Farfalla.

  This had better be good. She was in no mood for idle gossip.

  'I heard your Sarazin at word with the old man Elkin before Plovey bore him away. He questioned his future in the army. Did Elkin believe your claims true? That was what he said. Also-'

  From the translator's tale, Farfalla knew her efforts had been in vain. She had laid it on the line for Sarazin. But it had gone in one ear and out of the other. And now her son was with that monstrous Plovey, alone and unprotected. What indiscretions would he commit before she could retrieve him? -Cods! We'll be lucky if he lasts ten days.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bizzie: Farfalla's wench; wife of Hof-Gof the ostler; mother of Sarazin's half-brother Benthorn (sired by the farrier Fox). She is big-built, red-faced and bustling, and has (this is not idle slander but incontrovertible fact) an unfortunate taste for strong drink.

  While Farfalla feared disaster, luck favoured Plovey's inno- cent companion with an attack of diarrhoea, soon followed by nausea and vomiting. Giddy, pale and sweating, Sarazin was returned to his mother, who put him in Bizzie's care.

  You have the river-fever, love,' said Bizzie, bustling him into a bed.

  But Sarazin understood her not, for the first victim of his mounting delirium was his access to Churl. By dayfail, his body was fire, his sheets sodden with sweat, his world a babbling torment of gloating claws. In the torrids of fever, he oft spoke of Jaluba. When Farfalla joined Bizzie's bedside vigil late that night, Sarazin was troubling after his whore in speech rank with lust: coarse speech of the questing cock. Fortunately, the Rice Empire's Gel tic was entirely unknown to Farfalla.

  'My son,' said she. Or meant to say. For her tongue stumbled, and what she said was: 'Fox.'

  'Shall I fetch him?' said Bizzie. ' 'Twould be a sin to let the boy die unseen by his father.'

  'No,' said Farfalla, lighting another taper to supplement the single bedside candle. 'Fox is banned from the boy's presence. He knows it, too.'

  While Fox still worked in her palace as a farrier, she had banished him from her life, her thoughts, her dreams. So why did his name still haunt her tongue?

  TVly lady,' ventured Bizzie, 'if someone is to be punished, may it not be me? For, to be sure, 'tis cruel to you and him alike to cut him away entirely.'

  'Fox is banned as a matter of policy,' said Farfalla. 'Not as punishment. Flesh is what flesh is, and men are made as men are made. And women, too. It is his advice I must fear, and the boy also.' 'He means well,' said Bizzie.

  'I know, I know,' said Farfalla. Then: 'It's too late at night to talk politics. It suffices to say the man is dangerous.'

  Dangerous indeed, for his political passions were strong, to say the least. All too clearly he saw the wrongs of the world: and urged the world to action. Often in the past he had forced Farfalla to act. In the cause of justice, true. But by doing his will Farfalla had provoked the Regency into passing the unanimous vote necessary to take away most of her power..If she yielded to him again, she might lose her life.

  – And his. And my sons' lives. He talks as if life was well lost for a cause. But can a cause laugh or cry, breathe or feel?

  Sarazin moaned. For luck, Farfalla ran her hand through the flame of one of the candles, slowly enough to feel the heat yet too quickly for flesh to burn.

  Then touched Sarazin's forehead. Felt the protest of his scorched flesh. Stooped, and kissed. Salt on her tongue. His skin hot, unyielding, tight against the skull. But the width of a blade separates life from bone. Unwashedfrom his journey, he still stank of sun and horses. And piss, shit and vomit. -Like a baby.

  Child born in the years of her hope, the years of her love, when Fox had outshone the very sun. She had been young, strong, perfect. Alive in a world where all things were possible for her. And now?

  T)on't cry, my lady,' said Bizzie, touching her by way of comfort. 'Don't cry. I spoke of death but I doubt hell die.'

  Don't worry about me,' said Farfalla. Worry about him. I wish we had healers of worth in this city.'

  'There was a pox doctor at your gates but recent,' said Bizzie. 'He was turned away by the guards, but I saw him well. A handsome young man, oh yes. The strangest green eyes! I thought the guard cruel to chase him away without hearing.' 'Perhaps,' said Farfalla indifferently.

  She knew of no virtue in pox doctors, who were for the most part failed wizards or quacks more useless yet. As for her guards, they had orders to be ruthless, for all the world saw fit to beg at her gates yet her resources were but slender.

  You sleep now,' said Bizzie. 'It's not good for you to be awake and worried when you've work to do on the morrow.'

  'I've work to do before I sleep,' said Farfalla. 'Hunt out some help. We're going to wash this boy then sponge him down to cool the fever. Clean sheets would not go amiss, either.' Yes, my lady,' said Bizzie.

  Then bobbed her head and exited, leaving Farfalla alone with her son Sarazin. Delicately, she reached out and pinched a mosquito which had settled on his cheek. Plump with blood, it broke to a smear beneath her fingers.

  She was alone in the room. Very much alone. A hot summer night. Airless. Hot candles burning. Hames silent, shading from yellow to red. A puckering of purple, a thread of smoke ascending. And heat, yes, heat and weight, blood breaking. The white-hot stars shivering on the horizon as she gasped. -Fox. She knelt by the bed. And she wept.

  Fever racked Sean Sarazin for five days and five nights. Then receded, leaving him weak, troubled by persistent diarrhoea and a painful wheeze, and by hack-cough attacks which saw him gobbing up lumps of green and yellow phlegm. He was dismayed by his jellyfish limbs, his smoke- fogged vision. But even more dismayed to find his sword missing. It was valuable in itself, but all the more precious because it was the gift of Lord Regan. A royal gift. 'My sword!' he cried. 'It's stolen!'

  'Hush,' said the red-faced middle-aged woman at his bedside. Tour mother has your weapon in her keeping.' 'My mother? What wants she with a weapon of war?'

  'I know not, young master, for I have not the keeping of her will.' 'Who are you then?' said Sarazin.

  Tvly name is Bizzie. Once your mother's maid, but now yours.'

  Sarazin turned away, feeling sick. Was this a joke? Bizzie was the mother of Benthorn, his half-brother. Why had Farfalla done this to him?

  Tour mother has ventured a certain suggestion,' said Bizzie, laying her hand on Sarazin's brow.

  'To hell with her suggestions!' said Sarazin. 'I want my sword! I want it now! Go and get it!'

  But Farfalla kept the blade, not trusting him with anything so valuable. On revisiting his bedside she told him so explicitly:

  'This city of sin owns many temptations. I'd not have you lose a great treasure to such.'

  You treat me as a child,' said Sarazin, all resentment. TsAy father would not treat me thus.'

  'Fox is n
ot a party to this argument, and never will be. Fox is banned from your presence, and you from his.' 'You can't do that!' said Sarazin.

  'I can,' said Farfalla. 'I do. I must. Fox almost lost his life through radical politics, and almost cost me mine. Because of the dangers of such politics you must never meet.'

  As Celadon, Peguero and Jarnel accepted this ban, Farfalla did not believe Sarazin would do otherwise. Until now, Sarazin himself had never thought to seek out Fox, who was but a low-bred farrier. But, his curiosity piqued, he asked: 'What kind of man is he?'

  'Fox? He's… his best is excellent. Strength, wisdom, humour. But then… he has his moods. Black moods of anger when he… he wrecks his own work.'

  'Did he – did he take Bizzie in such a mood?' said Sarazin.

  You a man and you ask me that?' said Farfalla. 'He took her because she was available and I eight months pregnant with you. Oh, I remember. I won't forget. One of your feet must have been jammed beneath my ribs, because its reminder never left me. You were born in winter, I remember, and…'

  On and on she went, detailing Sarazin's genesis. This he found intensely embarrassing. He could have discussed sexual intercourse easily, even with his mother, for there a man found power and pleasure both. But birth? No! To have been born: it was, really, demeaning. He was scarcely pleased to be reminded that he had been small and helpless, yolk-wet and toothless, a writhing bundle of hunger- bawling incontinence.

  '… but I loved you, not least because you were my first. You cried when they took you, oh, you were so little, only four years old and you cried and cried, it near broke my heart, I cried myself for days…'

  This was a different woman from the one Sarazin had seen so far. Not the cold, hard, efficient ruler of the See of the Sun, but his mother. Who wanted him, who needed him, who had longed for him, who was unutterably lonely. Who embarrassed him. With her talk. With what she was. Big bones in her hands and her coarse-featured face. A wrestler's neck, a washerwoman's forearms. Had she no modesty?

  Surely only a peasant would talk so frankly of a bond of blood and milk. He had dreamed of a mother elegant, sophisticated and, above all, powerful. And had found instead this near-desperate woman who, it seemed, had nothing to give him. He was offended by the shapeless robes she wore, her unabashed physical strength, and her rude health – which was that of a well-fed peasant.

  Farfalla talked long and late with Sarazin, who devoted his own efforts to concealing his shame. When at last she left him, he found his thoughts turning again to his father. Fox. He was intrigued by what he had heard. A man of dangerous politics. -He sought to make himself emperor, perhaps.

  Thus thought Sarazin, and resolved to seek out Fox as soon as he was fit to rise from his bed. Which, judging from the condition of his flesh, would be a little while yet.

  While Farfalla won the day when Sarazin demanded the return of his blade of firelight steel, she could not always get her own way. For example: despite her objections, a team of army surgeons subjected her son to a medical. They listened to his chest and palpated his spleen without mercy; they thumped his knees with padded mallets and tweaked his ears with tuning forks; they smelt his urine, tasted his ordure, and drew a cup of his blood to weigh against an equal volume of water.

  Having done all this and more they diagnosed, variously, malaria, consumption, hepatitis, pneumonia and Favling- skon's disease; their prescriptions included a tincture of squids' ink and basilisk gall, powdered unicorn horn to be taken with gold dust and deer velvet, carefully calculated doses of dwale and hemlock, tablets of chalk and oxidised iron, and disks of sun-baked kaolin (to be chewed slowly then swallowed).

  'It is nonsense they talk,' said Bizzie, 'for this is but the river-fever, which cures itself if it heals at all.'

  Then that illiterate washerwoman showed her total ignorance of the wonders of medical science by throwing out all the prescriptions – even the most rare and valuable unicorn horn. She fed Sarazin upon honey, boiled skimmed milk, omelettes, and fresh placenta fried up with garlic.

  Slowly, he began to get better. So slowly, in fact, that the surgeons deferred his recruitment into the army indefinitely.

  'Since science had failed your flesh,' said one, 'I suggest theology. Pray to your god for a cure.' 'But I have no god,' said Sarazin.

  This comment was widely reported, and brought Farfalla hastening to her son's bedside. Once she had ensured their privacy she said, with unconcealed alarm: 'Are you an atheist?' 'Of course not,' said Sarazin.

  Illness had made him irritable, and being accused of a foible as witless as atheism would have annoyed him even in days of health perfect.

  Yet you told the surgeons you were godless,' said Farfalla.

  'I was passing an idle comment,' said Sarazin, 'not lecturing on theology. As it happens, Epelthin Elkin has taught me of half a hundred gods all worthy of belief.'

  Indeed, Elkin had taught Sarazin many subtle truths about theology. For example, that the gods themselves are subject to evolutionary forces, and, like plants and animals, change down through the ages. This of course explains why deities worshipped in ancient times are so different from those holding sway today.

  Where now is the Horn? Where now is Ameeshoth? They, the First Ones, are gone. They are as dead as the snow dragon, once the strongest, wisest and most beautiful of all the dragon breeds, but now gone and forgotten except where arcanely knowledged by a few of the world's greatest living scholars.

  Sarazin, therefore, was immune to atheism, a distemper which afflicts only the smallest and narrowest of minds. However, thanks to his excellent education, he knew that the hierarchies of the World Beyond are so complex that anyone claiming absolute authority on religious matters is ignorant, deluded or bluffing. Thus it is difficult to be sure one has chosen the right god to worship, particularly since many low-grade demons can inspire visions, work miracles and so forth. Sarazin, wishing to prosper in the afterlife, was still shopping around. He explained as much to Farfalla.

  Your concern for the afterlife must yield to temporal concerns,' said Farfalla. 'Selzirk looks with suspicion upon atheists proven or suspected. You must declare for the sungod today.'

  The sungod? A safe, middle-of-the-road choice. An austere, reasonably competent, fairly tolerant god who offered a choice of five different heavens. The sungod's followers had to do something truly abominable to be sent to hell, and the sungod's hell was, in any case, less threatening than most – it was a rainy day which went on forever.

  'Why hesitate?' said Farfalla, all brisk efficiency. This is a sure thing I The sungod is one of the Proven Deities, and a good-tempered deity at that. Cheap to worship, too. No need to burn incense, make sacrifices, chastise your flesh or cut off your nose. All you have to do is Declare yourself, then say a couple of prayers every time Mid- summer's Day comes around.' Yes, but,' said Sarazin. 'But what?'

  You spoke of temporal considerations. It's precisely those which make me hesitate. You see, I want a god who will help me in the here and now. Everyone knows the sungod doesn't go in for miracles.'

  Well, and what self-respecting deity does?' said Farfalla. I'm sure Elkin's taught you that most of the miracle- working gods only concern themselves with the world of events because they are virtually powerless in the World Beyond.' 'That's so,' said Sarazin. 'But-'

  'But nothing!' said Farfalla. You Declare for the sungod today. Let me explain…'

  Then she detailed her long-standing struggle with the Regency, which, early in her reign, had produced the unanimous vote necessary to take away most of her executive powers. Since she now knew that her son was expert at forgetting things he did not care to remember, she made no apologies for telling him things he might well know already.

  '… and ever more the Regency seeks excuse sufficient to impeach me. If impeached and convicted of crimes against the Constitution, then I will be executed, letting the Regency choose a more pliable puppet to be kingmaker.'

  Tiow does my religion come into it?' s
aid Sarazin, feeling it quite unfair that his mother's past should burden his own future.

  'Everything about you comes into it,' said Farfalla. 'Not discounting the things you say in fever.' 'What things were they?' said Sarazin.

  'I know not, for you spoke in a foreign tongue. But remember! From now on whatever you say, dreaming, drunk or in fever, may be used against you. And me! Say little, trust nobody, and steer clear of politics.'

  'Will the sungod help mute me?' said Sarazin, bemused at the way his mother rattled on about politics when the question at hand was religion.

  If I conspire to establish a dynasty,' said she, as if he had not spoken, 'to set a son of mine upon the throne of Selzirk, then that will be a crime against the Constitution. Political ambition on your part might well be seen as evidence of such conspiracy.' 'But religion

  …?'

  'All know the sungod approves of tradition, stability, the status quo. Once you Declare for the sungod, unlawful ambition on your part will immediately seem less likely, less believable.'

  Under powerful pressure from Farfalla, Sarazin shortly converted to worship of the sungod. He felt cheated, feeling he deserved a god who could offer him more in the way of practical day-to-day power. This was his constant thought: -I was made for better things.

  Others suspected his strong sense of entitlement. One such was Plovey zar Plovey, a career bureaucrat, spokes- man for the Regency and one of the most powerful players in Selzirk's politics. And one of the most dangerous.

  'The young man looks to be a posturing fool,' said Plovey to his colleagues, 'but he could yet be a danger to us.'

  'Then you will arrange his destruction,' answered the colleagues in question. 'It will be,' said Plovey, 'my pleasure.'

  True. It would be a special pleasure if Plovey could destroy Fox and Farfalla along with their son. As his first move, Plovey took out the files which had provoked the unanimous vote by which the Regency had deprived the kingmaker Farfalla of most of her powers.